Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1887-05-22

phlets recently written by Englishmen oil
good standing or the worlds great metroP-
oils. These books have all appeared with
in the last few years. two of them within a
year. In my letter ON the slums OF London
il is not the intention to deal with the
vices OF the city. but with the honest, hard
working poor. 1t is proposed to make a
careful investigation into every DIS
trirt in London, where the working
man. or the man who work if he could,
lives. l propose to deal largely with men
whom | have seen around the dock gates,
break their arms in struggling forward to
obtain work. and with women who wear
the flesh off their weary bones, working
day and night. And for what? To keep
over their heads such homes rs Mr.. Hitch
cock has sketched for this letter. And
sometimes, after a weary life Of this sort,
to find themselves homeless and pennies,
..appy dOssers'' as they are called, resting
OH the StairwayS of the terrible lOdlug
houses which abound in nearly all quarters
OF the city.
And what they?
Let the author of Starving London,
writing in the early spring OF last year, I'M
fold the melancholy closing scene, because
by some | am supposed to he q preJudleed
observer.
''What becomes Of those vino having
been forced down through all the grades OF
Doyerty, stand at the extreme limit, and
are at last hurled over that. What be-
comes of theSe2 The answer has been
given over and over again in the evidence
/ have detailed. They starye.'
Il i a fact that in London, people, able
and willing to work are starving for the
want of food. Last week l gave a dinner
consisting ola beefSteak padding, a pound
OF potatoes and 4 pint Of coffee to one hun
dred starving men, who with five Thousand
Others had stood NJ the dock gates waiting
for a lob. IL Is estimated that five thou
sand men are daily turned away from the
London docks. There is no work Tor them
TO do. This dinner, and the characters
met there, will form the topic for another
letter. Want is slowly and surely eating
I'M the vcrv existence OF the people here
and unless England awakenS to the fact
and finds industrial employment for the
people Of London, she will have a revolu-
ton on hand more terrible than any known
in history. There will he an end some day
to what the reasonable poor can stand,
even in England.
In the meantime Gifrcn, and Mulhall,
aud Jeans, and Goschen, and Chamberlain,
and a dozen Others, talk political economy to
them. Something stronger will soon be
heard from that sink of poverty and
wretchedness. the East End.
''ShaIl we let the people die?:'
When that cry comes, political economy
will indeed be relocated to Jupiter ami
Mars. The poor man nthe East argues
this way: Living is cheap, but the poor
find il cheaper to die. Death and disease
follow in the footsteps Of want. Bread has
never been cheaper than now, and people
% without for days. Everything IL de
preciated in value, the lives OF the pool
mist of all"
The danger in all this is that the peOpl,
thus forced into idleneSs and starvation
NAV take masters into their own hands
and that they are able to do 50, in point %
numbers, the statistics presented fuTthel
along i'm this letter show beyond n doubt
A walk through the slUms. or life amOns
the lowly in the worlds metropolis. Thi'
Is one OF the topics promised the readers %
the REGISTER. The popular idea OF 3 wall
through the sluns Of London would, NJ
doubt, be a night spent in 81. Giles. Sucl
an excursion would not affori h eslighteS
conception of the poverty, misery an
crime which abOundS within the limits o
the metropolis of London. l hayespen
one month among the homes OF the Lon
don poor, and have not vet seen half
Every day for a month past 4 certain mum
Der ofhOurs nave been occupied IN watkins
the streets, lanes, alleys and courts OF thu
modern Babylon. The misery, the wretch
edneSs. the S~qualOr, the disease, Oh" vice
the horrors / have seen in this period sur
passes anything / supposed it was possible
to find in ChTistendOm, within the area o
- 600 acres.